Sunday, April 26, 2015

Getting to Mars
With current rocket technology, it takes
between seven and nine months to reach Mars. That’s a long time to be
cooped up inside a tiny spacecraft with, presumably, a small number of
crewmates.
The potential psychological effects of such isolation
are not fully known, although there are parallels here on Earth with
long-duration submarine deployments and wintering expeditions in
Antarctica.

NASA announces world's biggest-ever rocket to take man to Mars and beyond

Then there are the physical health issues — in
weightlessness, your bones and muscles begin to deteriorate. Astronauts
aboard the International Space Station take regular exercise, but even
that does not fully stop the decline.
And then there’s food. Who wants to spend seven months eating
instant meals? Growing some edible plants during the journey sounds like
a good idea, but it’s a bit of a risky proposition — what happens if
your crops fail?

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

If we really wish to fathom the mysteries of antimatter, we must first
get to grips with the stuff itself. Easier said than done. How on earth
do you pin down a substance that vanishes the moment it touches
anything?Although it sounds exotic, antimatter would look no different to
matter if you came across a lump of it. Even individual atoms of matter
and antimatter would be indistinguishable. It’s only inside the atoms
that their true nature is evident.

Sunday, April 5, 2015

The Alcubierre drive or Alcubierre metric is a speculative idea based on a solution of Einstein's field equations in general relativity as proposed by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre, by which a spacecraft could achieve faster-than-light travel if a configurable energy-density field lower than that of vacuum (i.e. negative mass) could be created. Rather than exceeding the speed of light within a local reference frame,
a spacecraft would traverse distances by contracting space in front of
it and expanding space behind it, resulting in effective
faster-than-light travel.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Nuclear fusion reactions sparked by beams of antimatter could be
propelling ultra-fast spaceships on long journeys before the end of the
century, researchers say.

A fusion-powered spacecraft could reach Jupiter within four months, potentially opening up parts of the outer solar system to manned exploration, according to a 2010 NASA report.

A number of hurdles would have to be overcome ― particularly in the
production and storage of antimatter ― to make the technology feasible,
but some experts imagine it could be ready to go in a half-century or
so.